


Lonely

by bunnoculars



Category: SHINee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-03-16 11:59:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13635855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bunnoculars/pseuds/bunnoculars
Summary: Taemin and Jonghyun through the years. Taemin wants to be there for Jonghyun like Jonghyun has always been for him, and Jonghyun makes that hard sometimes.





	Lonely

**Author's Note:**

> These days I keep watching and re-watching and re-watching the badminton match from behind the scenes of Yunhanam. Somehow, this arose from that. Working title was five times Taemin makes Jonghyun jealous and one time he does it on purpose, but that one time never materialized and the whole thing kinda went off the rails.

**2005**

 

Of all the trainees, Taemin knows his face best. They’ve never talked, barely exchanged glances, but he’s always in the corner of Taemin’s eye. Already there when Taemin rushes to the agency after school, still there after moonrise when his mom’s worried phone calls finally drag him back to earth, and he knows he has to give up and go home. Pacing up and down the hallways with his battered headphones leaking sound, humming and squeezing his eyes shut and bopping his head like he’s alone in his own room. Locked up in practice rooms singing himself hoarse for hours and hours, shedding layers and sweating it out in the back of dance classes. Taemin even sees him sometimes on his bus, always wrenches himself into the closest seat before he gets spotted and has to greet him.

Taemin knows his name is Kim Jonghyun, but in his head he’s always been Incomplete hyung. 

There isn’t much to it—on his first day, Taemin had come across him shut in by himself, singing Sisqo’s “Incomplete”—but whenever he thinks of him, he thinks of him the way he sounded that time. He’s only had a few moments in his life that have crystallized into something clean and perfect in his mind, always there when he wants to go back, and he can still hear that voice, feel the way it made his heart leap even as it tightened the knot in his stomach, everything he wants to be, so far out of reach and right there.

Incomplete hyung notices him, too. The entire world gets wiped out when Taemin dances, so it’s a while before he realizes, but one day he comes back to himself and he can feel eyes on the back of his head, hears his voice, and then his own name.

“How old is he?”

“Thirteen, maybe?” 

Another hyung, Taemin can’t remember his name. There are so many kids training here, all older than him.

“Really, he’s thirteen?” Incomplete hyung says, too loud, and then laughs raggedly, like he doesn’t have enough breath, like he’s kind of mad at the world. “Shit, really…should I just stop trying? He’s only thirteen and he’s already that good, kids are scary these days.”

Their instructor is watching the group with sharp eyes when Taemin turns back to sneak a glance at them, and Taemin ducks his head out of reflex. They’re on a five minute break, so he goes over to the corner of the room to get his water bottle, fighting his embarrassment. He’s not sure how he’s taking it, never knows how to read past his burning ears and staticky skin. Doesn’t know whether he’s proud or hurt that he’s being singled out like a freak, like he hasn’t worked just as hard as everyone else to get here or something.

Later, much later, when he goes into the bathroom to change out of his sweats and back into his uniform, when the moment finally leaves his system, he thinks maybe Incomplete hyung has a name for him in his head, too. And it all begins again in his ears, pinpricks of fire, and he’s stuck until he gets home, shuts his door and leans against it, closing his eyes so he can see the sound of the television from the living room, his mother’s laughter.

 

The next time Taemin stays past dark, Incomplete hyung is still there as always. He’s singing some English song Taemin doesn’t recognize and can’t begin to understand. He takes his earbuds out of his ears, coiling them in his pocket until he needs them again, and it’s like breaking the surface of the ocean. Taemin forgets himself, staring openly through the small window in the door at Incomplete hyung’s sharp profile, the fierce knit of his brow and the vein standing out in his neck.

And then the music cuts out and Incomplete hyung shifts slightly, and his eyes meet Taemin’s before he can even react. Taemin sees his face contort in surprise, or maybe fright, before he cuts his gaze away and wishes the dirty, scuffed tiles at his feet could give him some time, maybe become his whole world until he stops choking on his heart. But the door swings open instead, sweeping Taemin’s eyes up, up, up.

“You,” Incomplete hyung croaks, then stops to swallow, hand clutching at his chest like he’s just run a mile. “Next time, say something…or just, something, okay? Don’t creep on people like that.”

Taemin nods, clenches his hands into the hem of his shirt just to do something with them. His mouth curls dumbly, the way it always does when he gets like this.

“Hey, do you even realize how late it is?” Incomplete hyung continues, like the time hasn’t just caught up with him as well, crossing his arms over his chest. “Don’t you need to do your homework, or something?” He snorts, and Taemin’s face combusts under his scrutiny. “At this point, seems like you’d have to choose between that or sleep.”

Somewhere deep inside Taemin, underneath the white noise, rebellion flares up, because there’s no way this guy isn’t a student himself, and if there’s one thing he hates about his new life here, it’s being the one person everyone else can talk down to. He’s sick with the certainty that he’s not going to be able to say anything, though, so he jerks his body into a bow, and moves to leave.

Incomplete hyung’s eyes narrow, and he makes an abortive gesture, like he’s going to grab Taemin’s shoulder or something. Then he tells Taemin to wait, so Taemin does, watching the water stains on the ceiling until he comes back with his jacket and bag. And then they’re free, out into the crisp night air, and Taemin has never felt more trapped.

At one point Incomplete hyung asks Taemin if he can even talk, and when Taemin nods he laughs out loud, reaches out and ruffles Taemin’s hair. His fingertips scrub across Taemin’s scalp and he’s not sure if he dislikes it or not.

And Incomplete hyung talks enough for the both of them, anyway. Taemin can barely keep up with him. His voice is so ruined from singing that Taemin wants to tell him to be quiet, but that would take words, and then some more to fill the vacuum his silence would bring.

When they get to their shared bus stop and neither of them says anything about it, Taemin’s insides shrink into a tight ball and he wishes he could abandon his useless body here and fly away into the big black sky for a while. He spends the next couple of minutes sitting on the bench next to Incomplete hyung, wringing all feeling out of his fingers and cringing away from all the times he can remember thinking he’d avoided Incomplete hyung’s notice, and totally ignoring him.

“Hey, are you even listening to me?” Incomplete hyung cuts in sharply. He reaches up to push his fingers through Taemin’s hair again, like he’s examining his skull. “You’re a strange kid, you know that? Nothing seems to get in or come out of here.”

He tips Taemin’s head lightly, and when he meets no resistance, his expression flickers, and then he does it again. This is already going so badly, but it’s just going to get worse and worse, and hopefully it’ll come full circle and become farce soon. And then suddenly Incomplete hyung’s features give way to an easy smile, like he’s just read Taemin’s mind, and before Taemin knows what’s happening, something like laughter bubbles up in his stomach, and he kind of loses the plot for a while. 

He hides behind his own hands until it passes, and Incomplete hyung has nothing to say, either, like a switch has been flipped in him. The night slowly filters in for the first time, fills his ears with car horns and clicking heels and clipped conversation, wheels slicing through puddles. When he’s okay again, the air cools his cheeks.

“I. I always pretended not to see you.” The words are out of his mouth before he can begin to regret them, which is new, but it doesn’t feel good. His kneecaps bite dully into his fingertips, solid under his hands. “On the bus, too. I don’t know why I’m like this, but it’s. I’m like this with everyone.”

He expects Incomplete hyung to scold him, maybe play generous and let him off. Instead he nods slowly, pursing his lips and raising his eyebrows, like, _I didn’t know_ , and _it’s fine, if that’s the way you are_. Then he leans back on his hands and tilts his head like he’s trying to get a new angle on him. Asks him casually, “What are you listening to all the time?”

Taemin looks back up at him, cleanly surprised. “Huh?”

“I don’t know. Whenever I see you, you’ve got your headphones in,” Incomplete hyung says, and as Taemin watches him openly, he grows intent on his own hands, almost like he’s shy, too. Taemin catches himself, ducks his head down. The smile that comes to him tests the muscles in his face like it’s feeling its way, like it’s totally new to him.

He reaches in his pocket and takes out his earbuds, nudges Incomplete hyung’s leg with his hand, and uncurls his fingers to show him.

“I’m the only one at school who doesn’t have an MP3 player,” he explains, hating how dumb it sounds out loud, “and people leave me alone if I wear these,” and Incomplete hyung’s face is impossible for him to read, and, “I like music, though. Really. If it was for real, I would still—”

“Are you as good at singing as you are at dancing?” Incomplete hyung interrupts him out of nowhere, and Taemin subsides. When he shakes his head, Incomplete hyung half laughs. “So this world is not completely unfair, good to know.”

And there’s that ugly twist in his gut again. With his organs mostly back in the place, it hurts more.

“You’re way better at dancing than I am at singing,” he says to his knees, and it’s true but he’s not sure Incomplete hyung will understand what he’s trying to say. He chances half a glance at him, sees his mouth thin as the words hit him, and then his courage fails him and he doesn’t look at anything.

He’s silent for so long that Taemin almost wants to check that he’s still there, wonders if maybe the bus will come before he answers.

“Taemin-ah~” 

It’s already strange to hear Incomplete hyung call his name before he starts shifting around to get a good look at Taemin’s face, check his reaction, and it’s so awkward Taemin doesn’t even know what to do, so awkward it’s not awkward. And so he gives in again, lifts his head but hides that same weird smile behind his fist because he doesn’t know what it turns his face into. He lets Incomplete hyung pet his hair, already used to his hands, always reaching out. 

“While you were busy ignoring me, I noticed some things, Taemin-ah.” He smiles indulgently as Taemin’s insides lurch, a real laugh this time. “For one thing, you’re too hard on yourself. You’re in elementary school and you’re already working late every day, stressing yourself out about stuff you can’t control. You’re not doing anything wrong, but when you’ve been doing it for twenty years, don’t you think you’re going to look back and feel cheated by the you right now?”

Taemin isn’t convinced. He thinks the future him sounds ungrateful, and that there’s no guarantee the future him will even be where he is if Taemin doesn’t do everything he can now, but there’s always something in Incomplete hyung’s voice that makes him want to believe him. And it’s the kind of thing his own brother tells him sometimes.

Silence pockets them again, soft and comfortable until the bus comes, and then Incomplete hyung grabs his wrist and pulls him to the very back, lets him have the window seat without complaint. The doors sigh close, and the engine rumbles to life beneath their feet. The bench where they spent the last ten minutes is gone in a heartbeat, and Taemin stares into the blue night.

“Taemin-ah,” Incomplete hyung prompts him, elbow digging painlessly into his side.

Taemin turns, looks at him, feels pretty good when he maintains eye contact for more than a couple seconds. 

He realizes he’s smiling as he forms the word. “Yes?”

“Taemin-ah,” Incomplete hyung says again, expectant. For one long, painful moment, Taemin is very confused, and then Incomplete hyung smiles mysteriously at him. “Taemin Taemin Taemin. Taemin-ah~”

Maybe…

Taemin tries it out. “Yes, hyung?”

_Jonghyun hyung._

Jonghyun hyung’s grin is wide and bright, his eyes glowing half moons.

“Are you hungry?”

 

**2008**

 

Before Taemin even lets himself in, he can tell something is slightly off, but it doesn’t slow him down. It’s just another one of those days, just like pretty much every day for the last couple of months, so.

Sure enough, he’s barely in the door when Jonghyun hyung says, “Taeminnie, come here, come on,” and beckons him over. The gesture grows as terse and exaggerated as his pulled mouth and knit brow when Taemin takes an extra couple seconds to kick off his shoes and shove them in line with everyone else’s because Kibum hyung is watching, too.

Kibum hyung, who is precariously balanced between bothered and completely over it. When Taemin gets close enough he shakes his head.

“Don’t bother with him,” he tells him loftily, but his face cracks into the smallest smirk when Jonghyun hyung shoves at his shoulder, and he goes in for the kill. “We’ve been cleaning all day, so he’s been talking back all day.”

“If you say so, Kibummie hyungnim,” Jonghyun hyung jokes, but Taemin can tell he’s forcing it from the way he’s not looking at either of them. And sure enough he goes on more for Kibum hyung’s benefit than Taemin’s, “The rest of you escaped and left me alone with him all day. Let’s be thankful you didn’t come home to a crime scene and leave it at that. Jonghyun with the feather duster in the living room…maybe Jonghyun with the scrubber in the bathroom…”

Ah. Taemin briefly wonders where Jingi hyung and manager hyung are in all this, why Minho hyung isn’t home yet, but his stomach still scrunches with guilt. The ahjumma that usually cleans for them took some time off and went down to the countryside for her daughter’s wedding, and Kibum hyung has launched into overdrive in her absence. The whole “mom” thing has gone from a stupid concept they all laugh off to a living nightmare. Today is the last day of his reign, but it’s also the beginning of his legacy, even if it’s not clear who he’s trying to impress.

“Didn’t you want me for something?” he says quickly. He’s too tired to pretend he’s invested when Jonghyun hyung launches into his usual spiel, but there’s not much to it anyway.

“I did the laundry last week, right. And Kibum’s turn always comes after mine, right. So in conclusion, it’s Kibum’s week to do the laundry, right?”

“But I did it last week, you helped me. And you’re after me.” 

And then Taemin’s brain catches up. Shit.

Kibum hyung’s eyebrows shoot up and he crows, reeling Taemin into the cradle of his arms and squeezing him tightly. Taemin doesn’t realize he’s smiling too until he catches a glimpse of Jonghyun hyung. Taemin’s missed the part where his betrayal first registered, because Jonghyun hyung’s just watching them narrowly, face gone sour.

Then he opens his mouth and he’s so easy to read Taemin’s embarrassed for him.

“Helping you _is_ doing it!”

When Kibum hyung just laughs at him, tells him off, “So don’t do someone else’s work next time, if you’re going to bullshit about it later,” he just keeps staring at Taemin, who keeps smiling horribly, because his face has stopped listening to him.

“I helped you and this is what I get? Honestly…” Jonghyun hyung pauses, bites his tongue, and then promptly says it anyway. “Taemin-ah, you shouldn’t be like that. You’re the last person who should. You know how much fucking time I’ve spent cleaning up after you, how much stuff I do for you?”

“Oh my god, who cares.” Kibum hyung is officially done. He grips Taemin’s shoulders and propels him towards the bedroom, and Taemin takes his lead gratefully. “Go on, go get changed. If you have homework, you don’t have to help us. There’s not much left to do, anyway.”

The bedroom is shut up and stuffy, and the air tastes stale. Taemin thinks about opening the window and crawls onto his bed instead, faceplanting into the soft coverlet. For a while his world is starch-scented and cotton white, and then his brain kicks in again and he has to accept reality.

He’s fine never moving again, even if he feels nasty because he got shut out of the bathroom this morning and someone stole his gym clothes at school, so his uniform is grungy with sweat. He’s operating on no sleep because Jingi hyung rolled over onto his bed again and snored in his ear all night, and his first full school day in months has filled his bones with lead and sucked his skull dry. They have a schedule tomorrow at like four in the morning, too.

Taemin is so used to doing as he’s told now that it freaks him out sometimes, and since they’ve debuted it’s started to feel like he goes whole days between breaths. And this life…he’s not any good at it. All he knows is dancing, and for the month they put their heart and souls into learning “Replay,” those last couple of weeks before he became Shinee’s Taemin, that’s all the company seemed to want from him. And he’s always known, too, that he has to change, but he never knew he’d be pushed sideways instead of up up up, trapped into being this cute kid who doesn’t know anything he’s not supposed to know. He’s been smiling for months and months, and it’s a good thing that there’s no one around who can tell when it feels awkward and hateful. Jonghyun hyung doesn’t count, because it’s okay if he knows.

The door snicks open and Jonghyun hyung walks in. Taemin hears him clamber over Jingi hyung’s bed, and then the mattress dips, and Jonghyun hyung scoots up next to him, flinging his arm dramatically over Taemin’s back and nosing into his hair. Taemin knows he smells pretty ripe, but that’s not his problem. He’s never understood why Jonghyun hyung is still so clingy when he’s mad, anyway, but that’s better than what’ll happen later, when perspective is restored and the humiliation starts to creep in, and he can’t look Taemin in the eye even though he barely said anything to him. Taemin doesn’t hate this part.

“Taemin-aaaaaah,” Jonghyun hyung whines into his ear, before he fumbles to get a grip on him and shakes him. “Laundry.”

“In a minute,” Taemin mumbles into the blanket, and for his trouble leaves a wet spot. Yuck. He rolls onto his side, and Jonghyun hyung’s face is suddenly right there, so close he has to suppress the instinct to jerk back. “Just give me a minute.”

“So you’re saying you’ll help? Aigoo, thank you. I didn’t mean to rush you.” 

He watches Jonghyun hyung’s lips twist into an unwilling smile before his eyes close again. Jonghyun hyung’s hand is gentle when he pinches Taemin’s cheek, in contrast to the sarcastic bite to his words, and Taemin’s own mouth curves in response.

“Hey, you better not go to sleep on me,” Jonghyun hyung warns him sharply. The bed shifts under them as he sits up, and this time he reaches down and pokes at him so Taemin’s cheek presses into his teeth.

Taemin wants to know what would happen if he did, but Jonghyun hyung barely gives him a chance before he changes tack completely, smacking his shoulder, then shaking it, shrilling down at him, “I clean your house all damn day, and when you come home all you want to do is sleep.” When Taemin giggles Jonghyun just makes an indignant noise and hits him again. “Are you looking down on me? Do you think you’re all that because you make money?”

Taemin tries his best, deepens his voice into a low, rasping grunt.

“I work hard all day so you can stay home and play around, and all you can do is nag me,” is as far as he gets before he’s totally out of ideas. Then, on the first impulse that hits him, “My girlfriends don’t complain no matter what I do.”

Jonghyun hyung hacks out a disbelieving laugh, slipping out of character, before he shrieks, “Girlfriends? _Girlfriends?_ How many people are you cheating on me with?”

Taemin curls himself into a tight ball under the rain of blows that follows, but Jonghyun hyung just pries him open with ruthless efficiency and starts tickling him instead, keeps at it until Taemin can’t take it anymore, red-faced and wheezing with laughter. The direct approach does no good because Jonghyun hyung’s started working out recently and Taemin’s arms have turned to rubber anyway, so Taemin pulls where he should have pushed and bites down on his wrist, hard. Jonghyun hyung snatches his hand away, and he flashes Taemin a wounded look that breaks wide open in a second. His smile makes Taemin dizzy, there and gone as he moves to get up.

“You should be grateful I even married you, you dirty, stinky bastard,” he says, high and breathless, and leans in to slap Taemin’s ass on his way out. “Laundry.”

 

It takes both of them to haul the hamper down three flights of stairs and into the basement laundry room. Taemin knows Jonghyun hyung dislikes this room just as much as he does, because his family has always washed their things by hand, too. But once they’re already there, at least it shouldn’t take long.

He’s bored with heaving armfuls of rank, damp clothes into the machine before he even starts, but it balances out because he’s never bored with Jonghyun hyung, who’s picking his way through piece by piece, examining each critically. “I thought I’d lost this shirt,” he says. Then, clicking his tongue, “Only Jingi hyung.” Then, rounding on Taemin with accusing eyes and a pair of hot pink boxers, “Don’t lie, these are yours, aren’t they?”

“Should we put you in, too?” Jonghyun hyung muses when that gets old. “You haven’t showered yet today.”

Taemin climbs into an empty washing machine without a word, and Jonghyun hyung casually shuts him in. He only lasts a couple seconds before he loses it, couple more before his conscience kicks in and he’s reaching in and half-dragging Taemin out.

And then they’re almost done when Jonghyun hyung starts chuntering his way through “So Hot” (Kibum hyung has been obsessed lately), and Taemin’s body falls into rhythm. He tries to keep his movements small, but Jonghyun hyung catches him in two seconds flat and promptly gives up on life, like he’s reached his absolute limit for the day. But he gets into it anyway, trying to sing and order Taemin around at the same time, and they end up wasting another fifteen minutes. As Taemin starts to go off track, he gloats, “Don’t just make stuff up on your own,” and shows him how he thinks it goes, makes him do it again and again until he’s satisfied.

When the machines kick into high gear, shaking and squeaking and groaning, they sit on their haunches and watch them spin, killing time. Taemin thinks it’ll be safe to go back up when Minho hyung finally shows up, because Kibum hyung doesn’t know him well enough to bully him like he does the two of them. And anyway, he’s slid back to resting point, back to that place where he just wants to let the earth turn without him.

“Should we go take a bath after this?” Jonghyun hyung asks him at length. “I went with Minho last month and no one recognized us, so it should be okay.”

Taemin thinks about it. Thinks about feeling new and clean, chilling for an hour or two, maybe taking a nap where there’s no Jingi hyung to bug him. Thinks about having to fetch his things, about walking to the bathhouse and back in the summer swelter, Jonghyun hyung bitching about the heat both ways, about how hard it would be to spend all that empty time trying not to think.

“I want to, but it’s so much effort,” he admits, and even he knows he’s whining, but he doesn’t hate himself enough to stop. “And I don’t know if I’m feeling gross, or if I feel gross because I’m tired, or if I’m feeling gross, and then even more gross because I’m tired.”

“You’re gross,” Jonghyun hyung assures him immediately, but lets it go just as quickly, and Taemin tries not to take offense that this is like the third time he’s brought it up. He knows how Jonghyun hyung gets about smell.

Another couple minutes. They’re going to have to get up soon. Not yet, but soon. Maybe they can stay until the cycle ends so they can start the dryer right away, that’s only thirty minutes.

“Don’t side with other people,” Jonghyun hyung says, so softly that Taemin gets to decide whether he’s heard him or not.

Taemin looks over at him, and keeps on looking until Jonghyun hyung gives in, and meets his eyes.

“Don’t say stupid stuff, so I don’t have to,” he says simply. And now Jonghyun hyung gets to decide if Taemin is messing with him or not.

Jonghyun hyung nods minutely, folded in on himself and chewing at his thumbnail. He’s silent for so long Taemin starts to get a little scared, waiting and waiting. Eventually he stops expecting him to say something, and stares down at the floor, too, sees whatever Jonghyun hyung sees.

 

**2010**

 

It’s July and the freezer section tucked into the back corner of the convenience store is paradise. He doesn’t get why Jonghyun of all people is hurrying him along. Maybe he doesn’t care if banana split and strawberry swirl are locked in a deadly stalemate, but they walked half a mile in 80 degrees to get here, and he definitely has feelings about that. 

“Whatever, just get both,” Jonghyun says, grabs them before Taemin can say anything and makes his way to the front. The girl at the counter pauses when she sees the two of them, but she doesn’t say anything, just rings them up. The smile Taemin gives her on the way out is genuine.

Jonghyun leads him to the round table on the far side of the storefront, kicking out one of the teetery plastic chairs and throwing himself down. Taemin sits across from him, takes the bag from him and rips the first ice cream bar open without checking it first. Strawberry.

Jonghyun plays with his phone while Taemin eats, cap pulled low over his face. He’s been a little off all day, and it’s starting to wear on Taemin’s nerves. They’d both stayed after group practice so Taemin could help Jonghyun work through the choreo again, more out of habit than anything, because it doesn’t seem like he’s having too much trouble this time. And Taemin is always ruthless with him, but that’s because Jonghyun usually works just as hard to make Taemin laugh, to throw him off…but he’d kept up with him today, silent and intense, never taking his eyes off him, frustration rolling off him in waves whenever he messed up. Taemin had thought maybe Jonghyun taking him seriously was just another way of fucking with him, so he’d pushed and pushed and pushed and then nothing had happened in the end.

Their sweat washed off in the shower and this ice cream is reparations, or something. Jonghyun had gone with him readily enough, but now that they’re here, he hasn’t gotten anything for himself.

“Jingi hyung says he’s been helping you out with your vocal technique,” Jonghyun says suddenly, after ignoring him completely for five minutes.

“Uh huh,” Taemin says around his ice cream, before he catches sight of Jonghyun’s face and everything stops making sense, because he’s visibly annoyed. His ribs constrict. “What?”

“From now on I’ll help you,” Jonghyun says. Blindsides him and then stares him down like he’s daring him to say no.

Taemin doesn’t understand what’s going on, feels like they’ve started at the middle of a conversation. It seems unfair somehow that Jonghyun is offering him something so huge like it’s nothing, like Taemin is the kind of person who could turn him down so easily. But underneath everything his body feels light, and he thinks he’s happy. That difficult kind of happiness that sits in his throat and hooks the corners of his mouth, makes it hard to look Jonghyun in the eye.

All he can do is nod, and Jonghyun softens a bit, watching him, shoulders falling back. Just like that, Taemin can eat again, doesn’t worry about how it looks when his mouth is full and he still can’t stop smiling at him.

“You helped me with dancing so much already, did you think I wouldn’t return the favor?” Jonghyun prods him.

Taemin laughs him off because he doesn’t know what to say, how to tell Jonghyun that it’s too hard to ask any of the members for that kind of help, when all he ever does is show them his bad side, his weak side, and he hates that about himself more than anything. That just accepting what he’s offered is somehow easier. That he’d give anything to sound like Jonghyun, but every step Taemin takes towards him is even more painful and embarrassing if he knows that Jonghyun knows.

Jonghyun seems to sense something, because he lets Taemin change the subject, has endless patience for whatever random thing comes to mind next: the drama Taemin’s mom is obsessed with, the crazy rumors Taemin’s heard about himself at school, the silly pranks Jongin is always pulling on him. And then Jonghyun will circle back, put it to Taemin like a joke, “Did you think Jingi hyung is easier?” and “Does _he_ buy you ice cream?” and Taemin never has an answer for him. They’re both so nervous and Taemin doesn’t even understand why.

It gets to the point where Jonghyun can’t take it anymore.

“Why _didn’t_ you ask me first?”

“I didn’t ask Jingi hyung, either, it just turned out that way,” Taemin says automatically, and even if it’s the truth, he feels disloyal for putting it like that. He can’t remember if Jonghyun knows the story, but it’s never seemed important before. “I used to go up on the roof to sing when we were trainees, and Jingi hyung did too, so that’s how we met. He helped me a lot back then, so that’s just kind of how things ended up—”

Jonghyun is unimpressed, and cuts across him, “Do you like me or Jingi hyung better?”

“Jingi hyung.”

He’s rewarded when Jonghyun gapes at him, scandalized, but Jonghyun recovers fast. He snatches Taemin’s ice cream out of his hand before he has time to react, holding it out of reach and matching Taemin’s smirk with one of his own.

“Does Taeminnie like Jonghyun hyung better or Jingi hyung better~?”

Taemin ruins his fun and just starts on his next flavor. It gets funnier when Jonghyun’s face falls and he chomps down on Taemin’s strawberry swirl out of spite, revenge that backfires pretty badly when he’s left with a mouthful of ice cream and sensitive teeth. Taemin snaps, high on a cocktail of sugar and nerves, and Jonghyun holds out for as long as he can, before he has to hide the stubborn turn of his jaw behind his hand and fight to swallow. Taemin can still see his eyes dancing, so it’s okay.

“What did you think of me when you first met me?” Jonghyun asks him when they’ve calmed down and the people going by have stopped shooting looks at them.

He’s still trying to play it cool, but it’s too late for that, and watching Jonghyun sucking on the inside of his cheek, Taemin badly wants to be honest. The words just don’t come to him, because they never do.

“Ummmm. You were kind of scary? No, actually, um,” because that isn’t right, and he wants to get it right. He doesn’t have to close his eyes to go back to that first time, but it’s deep enough inside himself that it’s hard to bring it out into the sallow street light. “My first day, I saw you singing on my first day. Actually, I heard you before I saw you. You were…you were cool.”

Jonghyun scans his face, intent, assessing. There’s a weird, secret smile playing about his lips, and his voice is gentle when he prompts him, “And now, what do you think about me now?”

“That’s harder,” Taemin admits. Jonghyun waits for him. He holds onto the table for dear life. It’s getting harder and harder to look at him, so he doesn’t. “You’re just…Jonghyun hyung. I don’t think I can put you into words.”

His heart is thundering in his ears and his lungs are closing up, and the more he concentrates on his ice cream, the less he can taste it, but he keeps eating. When he can look up again, Jonghyun is right where he left him.

“What about me?” He says it so quickly he stumbles over the words. “What did you think of me at first?”

Jonghyun’s expression shifts subtly.

“Cute.”

“And now?” Taemin presses.

“Cute,” Jonghyun repeats, and beams at him.

Taemin hopes it doesn’t show when disappointment settles in his chest, an oblique ache that weighs him down, and lingers in frustration. Jonghyun seems okay now, which means Taemin didn’t say anything weird, he made things better somehow, which should be good enough. He doesn’t want to feel like this.

Jonghyun has gone quiet, but it’s different than before, the kind of silence that stretches out and makes itself comfortable between them. He’s content just to watch Taemin eat, and so Taemin eats and eats. When he finishes up the banana flavor, Jonghyun seems to remember he’s been holding the strawberry hostage and hands it back to him. 

After a while Jonghyun yawns, and Taemin’s gotten so used to how tired they all look that it’s like he’s noticing the shadows under Jonghyun’s eyes and the slump of his spine for the first time. He doesn’t get why Jonghyun does things like this, why he runs himself ragged going along with Taemin and lets him think that whatever he wants, Jonghyun wants too, like he has to trick Taemin into being selfish. And Taemin’s not sure whether he’s never supposed to catch on, or if he’s just supposed to pretend he doesn’t know at this point.

Taemin tries to eat faster, takes big bites and chews it like Jonghyun always does, and it’s too much too fast, a total shock to his system. For a couple seconds he can’t move or think.

“Hey, take your time,” Jonghyun chides, zeroing in straight away, cupping his cheek and wiping his mouth with his thumb. Taemin is frozen, and it feels like Jonghyun is burning fingerprints into his skin, and.

His body gets back online and he rockets up out of his chair, knocking Jonghyun’s hand away.

“Let’s just go, hyung, if I eat any more I’ll explode,” he says, and doesn’t stick around for Jonghyun’s reaction. 

He’s on the sidewalk already when Jonghyun catches up. They don’t get very far before Jonghyun starts pleading with him, and Taemin’s body gets lighter and lighter with each step.

“Taeminnie, let’s go together,” and, “It’s hot, come on, slow down,” and, “Hyung has short legs, have mercy,” and finally—

Jonghyun snatches a handful of Taemin’s T-shirt, yanking him back so that Taemin stumbles and almost falls into him. The smile on Taemin’s face is still growing and fit to burst, and one look at the faux-outraged face Jonghyun wears as he demands, “You’re doing this to me on purpose, aren’t you?”

That’s all it takes.

 

**2013**

 

“Does my face look bloated?”

“You look the same as always?” Jingi hyung tells him, like he’s not sure if that’s the right answer. Taemin has asked the wrong person.

Kibum examines him critically when Taemin appeals to him. It’s kind of funny, watching him strain to peer over the back of the seat in the pre-dawn half light, but Kibum clucks his tongue at him and Taemin stills, papers over his expression as if he’s in public.

“You’ll do,” Kibum tells him at length. “Make up hides a lot, anyway.” 

“Is there a lot to hide?” Taemin frets, just to see Kibum smirk before he twists back around and gets comfortable again, hunching against the door and mirroring Minho next to him. 

So Taemin probably shouldn’t have stayed out last night of all nights. He doesn’t think making a bad decision means you’re doing something knowing it’s wrong, though. It doesn’t have to mean anything, as long as you can live with it. Now Taemin just wants to get it over with, knows the burning won’t crawl back down into his stomach until he puts on his face, some kind of timestamp that marks the end of yesterday’s Taemin, and the beginning of today’s.

Goddamn, he hates doing variety.

Jonghyun does too, and maybe that’s why he didn’t sleep last night, either. Taemin knows as much because of the straight, still line of his back when he’d noisily stumbled his way into their room an hour ago, and the dead weight pressing Taemin down whenever Jonghyun’s eyes landed on him at breakfast. He looks just like he always does, that’s the thing.

“How much did you drink, anyway?”

Kibum again. He doesn’t look back this time.

“Not enough to get drunk,” Taemin hedges.

“And you didn’t go clubbing, either.” 

Kibum makes it sound as if he can smell a lie, but Taemin can tell from the way his head thunks against the window that he does believe him, and he’s judging him, hard. The rest of them are silent, still only half there. 

If he angles himself just right, Taemin can see all the way into the front, the slope of Jonghyun’s cheek, the tip of his ear and the set of one shoulder. It makes him feel lonely.

“A couple of us did, but I didn’t,” and when Kibum makes a low noise in his throat to produce this very reaction, he still protests, “Really! Just…it felt like a waste going home, so Jongin and me and some other people ended up going to a noraebang and killing time.”

Kibum squawks so loudly that Jingi hyung emerges from his semi-conscious state to sigh, pet Taemin’s head in comfort or maybe solidarity. 

Jonghyun doesn’t move.

 

Taemin’s pretty sure he did something wrong.

There’s no time for lunch today, but they’ve bullied manager hyung into a quick pit stop at a convenience store before they go to the fan meeting. Jonghyun blacked out in the front seat at some point without any of them realizing, so they just left him there, and now Taemin is trying to cover for him.

“Taemin-ah, that’s too much, come on,” Minho groans when he gets a load of Taemin’s basket. He’s checking out, and the rest are gone already.

Taemin doesn’t have time to care what he thinks. “I’m paying for it, what are you worried about? Ah—“

Tuna mayo kimbap. He only knows his own tastes when it comes to snacks so he’s gone for variety and quantity in the hopes that something will pass muster, but this, he’s confident about. When they were trainees, Jonghyun would buy them for him all the time, and it was the only thing Jonghyun could eat more of than Taemin.

When Taemin comes out of the store, Jonghyun is outside, alone, stretching his legs and squinting in the watery winter sunlight.

“Where did everyone else go?”

“You’re asking me?” Jonghyun breathes out a brittle laugh, like the irony is too much for him to ignore. Taemin has the creeping sensation that he’s being accused of something, like it’s Taemin’s fault he woke up alone and probably freaked out just now. Or something. Jonghyun doesn’t wait for him to catch up, anyway. “Jingi hyung left his stuff and went to find a bathroom, and everybody else is back.”

It’s been such a long day and it’s only eleven, so Taemin just moves on. Jonghyun can’t expect him to wake him up when he does sleep, and that’s more important than whatever’s going through Jonghyun’s head right now, anyway. 

He shows Jonghyun his loot so he has something to do with his hands, thrusting the bag at him and holding it wide open under his nose. “I didn’t know what to get…”

“…so you got everything. Taemin-ah, is there anything left in the store?” Jonghyun says helplessly, maybe just to humor him. Looking at it seems to stress him out, and he moves away.

The bag feels like it weighs fifty pounds when Taemin lowers his arms. Somehow this isn’t going right, and he knows deep down that he shouldn’t have expected food to work on Jonghyun. Still, “You’ll help me eat it, right?”

“What is this? You did this all on your own and now you want me to take responsibility.” Jonghyun is hovering between disinterested and overwhelmed, just too fucking exhausted to deal with any of it. “I’m not hungry, though.”

“Hyung~” he tries. The truth is Taemin has never felt less cute, hot and cold, stretched thin and tired to the bone. His face is grimy with make up, his contacts have been in for two days straight and his skin feels too tight, and Jonghyun doesn’t want to look at him. Taemin is probably tiring him out.

“Really, I’m not.”

“But look, tuna mayo,” he says, and his voice sounds so small and pathetic to his own ears that he bites his tongue, doesn’t know why he can’t leave Jonghyun alone, can’t make himself shut up, why he can’t just _stop._

Maybe Jonghyun can tell he’s trying, even if he’s in a place where it can’t get through to him, because he sighs, reaches out and ruffles Taemin’s hair like he’s always done. Everything settles inside Taemin in that moment, until his hand slips down and curls thoughtlessly around the back of Taemin’s neck, skin on skin, and Taemin’s body responds, and the atmosphere between them wrenches sideways.

That’s probably because the last time Jonghyun put his hand there his tongue was shoved down Taemin’s throat.

This new thing between them only exists in their room, in the dark, but it leaves traces in both of them, all day every day, and they don’t even have to look for it, to find it in each other. Taemin knows the signs now as faithfully as he knows Jonghyun’s other tells, and he’s never been able to hide anything from Jonghyun, either. The problem is that neither of them knows what any of this means.

Like now, Jonghyun is letting himself get pulled in, studying his face with new eyes, abstractly fascinated. He knows, when Taemin’s cheeks flood with heat. He knows, when Taemin bites his lip and stares right back and tries to control himself, tries to make Jonghyun lose it a little. Knows, when Taemin doesn’t move away, and leans into the feeling instead. 

But Taemin doesn’t know how to say things with his body that Jonghyun actually needs to hear. Like, _You’re not mad at me, right?_ and, _I’m sorry I went out all night without letting you know first,_ and _I’m sorry for leaving you alone all night._ Right now he only has tuna mayo kimbap for that.

Jonghyun drops his hand so suddenly Taemin’s head spins, and then Jingi hyung is pushing him towards the van, they’re going to be late if they don’t hurry, and all Taemin has ever wanted is time to think.

 

Coming out of the fan meeting, Jonghyun finds his second wind just as Taemin starts to crash. Maybe a couple hours of undying love and adoration from all directions was good for him, who knows. Taemin never knows what to do with it, always comes away thinking of all the ways he doesn’t deserve it.

Two radio interviews left, and they can go home. Taemin wants to go home. He wants to crawl into his bed and never get up. He wants to hate Jongin, but he can’t even do that, because he knows that he didn’t sleep in, isn’t lying around playing video games right now, he’s probably gone in to work even though his group won’t mount a comeback for months.

He also really, really wants to muzzle the others. They ransacked the snacks Taemin got so much shit for splurging on earlier and now they’ve got the radio blasting and they’re still trying to compete with it and with each other, making such a ruckus that manager hyung finally pleads with them to keep it down.

It’s a lost cause, though, because “Dream Girl” comes on next.

“Let’s all do our own parts,” Jonghyun says quickly, and there’s no time, “Taeminnie, go!”

Taemin sleepwalks his way through the first verse until Kibum comes in, then Jingi hyung, and the next time his part comes around he doesn’t realize until it’s too late. Minho reaches over and grabs his wrist and starts waving his arm around like crazy, trying to pump him up, and when that fails, he jumps in for him. His voice is too deep and instead of trying he leans into it, hard. Taemin is carried off in the current as Minho grunts and shouts along with the Taemin in the speakers, until his body protests as loud as it can that he needs to get a grip.

“Taemin oppa, I love you~!” he trills when he can breathe again, still hanging onto Minho’s arm for dear life.

“I’m Minho, though,” Minho says, supremely indifferent.

“Ah, sorry.”

Taemin bides his time. When Minho’s rap comes around, he corners him, shrieking right into his ear. 

“Kyaaaaaaaa Minho oppa! You’re so cool! Minho oppa, I love you~!”

Minho holds out, but his is voice shaking closer and closer to breaking point, when Jonghyun cuts off his wild ad-libbing to slant them a look and demand, “What, there’s no ‘Jonghyun oppa, I love you?’”

Taemin teeters dangerously between two worlds. In one, Minho is saying, “Hey, don’t steal my fan,” huggling Taemin and throwing Jonghyun the kind of shit-eating grin that never fails to set Jonghyun’s blood on fire, while Jingi hyung fills in the gap Jonghyun left and kyaongs happily. In the other, Jonghyun is waiting for him to say something.

And Taemin doesn’t know what Jonghyun wants from him, mostly because he doesn’t know what he wants from Jonghyun, either. He’s decided a couple times that he doesn’t know how to be any way with Jonghyun other than the way they already are, but that always seems like an excuse, because in all the time they’ve known each other, they’ve both done nothing but change, they both want to change, and this is just one more thing.

It’s more like he’s scared to see how these things will fit together, the world where he knows what Jonghyun tastes like, what he sounds like when he comes, that he likes having his hair played with and gets off on talking dirty, and the world where they have their own lives, and only fight about things that don’t matter, where he pretends he doesn’t notice when Jonghyun cries because he doesn’t know what to do, and Jonghyun babies him like he’s still thirteen, and he doesn’t know how he can ever become to Jonghyun, everything that Jonghyun is to him. 

“No, there’s only ‘Jonghyun-ah, I love you,’” Taemin says, carefully picking his way around the smile that’s become muscle memory at this point. It’s not that he’s worried about getting away with it. Just…it feels fragile.

“Aaaaah,” Jonghyun intones. He’s a little too eager, almost hanging off Taemin’s words. “In that case there should be no ‘Minho-yah, I love you,’ either. I see how it is.”

As he speaks, he and Taemin are locked in some kind of painful staring contest where no one wins anything, but Taemin won’t let himself look away all the same, not sure if he’s reassured or dismayed by Jonghyun’s pettiness, if he loves or hates Jonghyun’s eyes on him.

Jonghyun tears his gaze away in the end, but he keeps glancing back as Taemin settles against the window and cements his betrayal, ignores Minho’s appeals.

And then “Dream Girl” is old news because “I Got a Boy” is on now, and Kibum is calling for backup, and it all begins again.

Taemin can’t do this much longer.

 

It’s two in the morning when they pile into the car for the last time. At the end of a day like this none of them ever feel like talking, all the more because they’re just going to do it all over again in a couple hours. 

There’s no traffic and the moon is hanging low over Seoul, and Taemin thinks that it’s probably a beautiful night, that it was probably a beautiful day, too. Someday he hopes he starts noticing stuff like that.

Jonghyun is in the backseat with him, one of a few places where they’ve spent the most time together. He’s slumped against the window, but Taemin knows he’s not asleep from the set of his jaw. He wants to see his face clearly so badly, but it’s too dark to really look at him.

Jonghyun is already tense when Taemin carefully leans into his side, and he feels Jonghyun’s whole body stiffen against him when Taemin’s hand lands on his thigh, hears his breathing pick up. Then slowly, excruciatingly, he relaxes, lowers his head onto Taemin’s shoulder and turns his face into his neck, lips brushing his skin. Taemin rests his head on Jonghyun’s in turn, like they’re playing skinship jenga or some crazy thing. The thought fades into nothing when Jonghyun takes his hand in his own and draws it into his lap, stroking his thumb along his knuckles and lacing their fingers together.

He should be able to sleep now, now that he doesn’t want to.

 

**2014**

 

Jonghyun’s face changes when he’s drunk, softens somehow. He’s lost so much weight lately, the angles in his face grown sharp and fine as broken glass, but like this, the years fall away and he’s looking at the Jonghyun only he knows, the one who used to walk him home at night, and then linger at Taemin’s house for an hour afterwards because he didn’t want to go back out into the dark alone.

This Jonghyun is also a complete pain in the ass, by turns maudlin and hard to please. When Taemin returns to him with two cups of vending machine coffee burning up his hands, Jonghyun’s mouth crimps with distaste and he won’t lift his hand to take it, and there’s nothing Taemin can do, except sigh and take a seat next to him and listen to the river.

Jonghyun side-eyes him.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he mutters, like it’s obviously something.

When Taemin hooks his mask off one ear to drink the night air slaps his face, but the coffee scalds his tongue, and Taemin wishes he could meet them somewhere in the middle, instead of dealing with two extremes. 

“Honestly,” Jonghyun starts up like clockwork, and that’s never a good sign, “I respect that it’s a classic, but still. This is weak, Taeminnie. Coffee by the river? You should be trying to impress me, I’m not this easy.” He sinks deeper into his hoodie, mumbling so that Taemin almost misses it, “And you know I don’t like coffee.”

“Aigoo,” Taemin sighs, getting tired just watching him. Still…”Is this a date?”

“Then what else would it be?” Jonghyun says to his knees.

Jonghyun looks so put out that Taemin plants a kiss on his cheek and tries again as cheesily as he can, “Drink up, Jonghyun-ssi, it’s cold out,” and Jonghyun is placated enough to accept it, hiding his smile in the folds of his coat. He takes a sip and pulls a face. Reaches out with an air of studied nonchalance and feels for Taemin’s hand, takes it clumsily in his.

“It’s a date,” he reminds him, even though Taemin’s not saying anything.

It’s not a date. It is the first time Taemin’s seen Jonghyun in two weeks, and it’s turned out like this, public park bench at three in the morning, babysitting Jonghyun because Jonghyun can’t drink well and he refuses to go home like this and Taemin can’t leave him alone. It’s not that he doesn’t understand, not that he’s surprised at how things have gone, because he knows how it was with his own solo debut, each day anxiety climbing up his spine with its million legs, and even though he’s hidden it longer and better, he knows that Jonghyun is the same as him inside.

He’s just being selfish.

“I’m not actually that drunk,” Jonghyun confesses, and that’s probably the coffee and the December air talking. “I could have gotten myself back okay, I think. Just…I feel dirty going back to my mom’s house like this. And I don’t wanna go home yet. If I go home and I sleep, I have to get up tomorrow.”

“But _I_ wanna go home! _I_ wanna sleep!” Taemin’s patience has worn thin enough that his voice rises into a whine.

“Wow, you’d rather sleep than go on a date with me, that hurts my pride,” Jonghyun huffs, trying to pass it off as a joke, and maybe it’s the dead hour or the near quiet, but his voice sits on Taemin’s chest. Jonghyun toys with Taemin’s hand, hesitates. “Don’t you think about me at all?”

“I can always dream about you,” Taemin retorts, triumphant when Jonghyun rewards him with a sly half-smile that he returns with interest.

“I dream about you, too,” Jonghyun assures him. He’s not letting him off the hook, though, because he goes on, “That’s different from what I’m talking about.”

Taemin doesn’t know what to say. He wants to ask him if he knows anyone else that would sit here and freeze and listen to him talk to himself, if Jonghyun knows anyone else who’s sat there and listened to him and never said anything for years and years and years now. But he’s being stupid, Jonghyun probably means something else, so he drinks his coffee. Waits.

“It’s more like…I’ll go through my day, and you’ll just be there. Like, what kind of face would you make if you ate the food I’m eating, what would it sound like if you said the things I’m saying, would the things that make me sad make you smile…”

“I think all those things, too, though.” Relief pours through him like sunlight, and he’s talking too fast, stumbling over his words in his rush to get through to him. “All the time. Like, um. ‘Would this make Jonghyunnie hyung laugh?’ ‘Would this make him mad?’ Or…”

He trails off because Jonghyun’s mouth is curling into a bitter, self-ironic smile. Taemin realizes too late that he’s squeezing Jonghyun’s hand bloodless and releases him, but Jonghyun hangs on.

“That’s not it, either. Not, ‘How would it be if Taeminnie were with me,’ but, ‘How would it be if my thoughts were Taemin’s thoughts’…that kind of thing.” Jonghyun can’t seem to meet his eyes, and Taemin can’t stop staring. “Sometimes I love you so much it’s like I want to be you. That sounds so insane when I say it out loud, doesn’t it?”

When Taemin remembers he has a voice, he still has no words, and he’s never hated himself more.

“It’s okay if you can’t understand me, Taemin-ah,” Jonghyun says, risking a quick half-glance at Taemin’s face, before his misery nails his eyes to the ground again. “I can’t understand myself, and you’re…you. How could you understand someone like me?”

And that…The coffee is a river of numbing fire down his mouth and throat, but it doesn’t register as pain because his whole system whites out. Jonghyun feels him trembling before Taemin catches on, snatches his hand away, shuts him out point blank when Jonghyun starts groveling on autopilot, voice a spiky bundle of nerves. He thinks his head will come off if he looks at him right now.

“Taeminnie, are you mad at me? I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything, I’m just. Hyung is just drunk, don’t be mad—”

“What are you sorry for? And why do you always turn this into something it’s not?” He has to force the words out of his chest, that tight painful place where all his breath got stuck. “If you really want to do this, if anyone loves anyone more, it’s me. I like _you_. I like you when you’re being stupid, or, or annoying, or mean, when you embarrass me and waste my time and push me around, I don’t care. It’s all the same. What about you?”

Jonghyun reaches out to him again, almost quick enough, but Taemin knocks his arm away so easily, and now that he can breathe again he can’t keep up with it. The paper cup is a ruin in his hand, still warm and crushed in on itself. He already wants to apologize to Jonghyun, for putting this all on him, but later, later.

“Sometimes I get scared that you don’t like me, hyung,” he admits to the darkness, throat closing up weirdly. “Like the person you like isn’t me. The way you talk about me, like I’m beautiful and awesome and perfect, whatever, sometimes it makes me feel really good? And then sometimes I think you’re being serious, and then I just feel lonely.”

He’s gotten far enough that he’s sure he won’t cry, and somehow that makes it easier.

“I’m afraid to go out in public without make up now,” he says to the sky. “And I keep trying to be like you, but it’s so hard for me. I have my own ideas, but they’re nothing special, and most of the time I end up doing what other people expect me to do. And I don’t want to let you down, but at the same time it feels like you don’t expect anything from me. It’s just…it’s hard.”

He thinks he’s done. It suddenly terrifies him, staring down the maw of silence, but looking at Jonghyun right now would be worse. He doesn’t know what he’s done to his own face.

“And what about me, do you think I’m the person you think I am?” Jonghyun says at last. His fingers brush Taemin’s when he grips the edge of the bench next to him, and then he bumps him with his shoulder softly, warm and solid. He makes a stab at humor, “Jonghyun, Jonghyunnie hyung?”

“I know you are,” Taemin says plainly.

“I don’t see myself like that, though. I can’t see what you can see in me?”

Jonghyun tilts it into a question, bumps him again when Taemin is slow to answer, and a weird feeling is fighting its way onto Taemin’s face.

“Then...you’re wrong, and I don’t care what you think.”

“I don’t get a say? We’re talking about me, though,” Jonghyun says, playing along like he is absolutely going to make Taemin smile and there’s nothing Taemin can do about it, but how can he, when Taemin can tell his heart isn’t in it.

“You don’t deserve one, if you’re gonna be like that,” Taemin informs him, letting him think he’s messing around if that makes it easier. And in the end that’s exactly what Jonghyun wanted him to say, and maybe that’s all Jonghyun hears, not the part where Taemin really means it, because— 

“Then why are you any different? Maybe you can’t see yourself that way, but the Taemin I see and the Taemin the world sees are the same. The Taemin I love and the Taemin the world loves are the same, and you don’t know how special that is,” Jonghyun says, and Taemin doesn’t need to hear anymore, because there’s something in Jonghyun’s voice that trips an alarm deep inside him, and he’s already worried about what he’s going to do when Jonghyun breaks down. Jonghyun tries to fight the current, coughs up a laugh, but that’s how he ends up losing control. “You think there’s anything I don’t know about you? I know everything about you, and you still make me crazy like this.”

“Ah, hyung, really,” Taemin says disgustedly, totally unnerved and trying to hide it, even though there’s no one around to see them. He pats him on the back. “What are you crying for?” 

“Fuck,” Jonghyun mumbles, scrubbing a rough hand over his face, before he shoots Taemin a glare, eyes red and cheeks shining with tear tracks. “You should know, it’s all your fault.”

Taemin slides a hand up his back to pet his hair, soft and subtly greasy as it slips through his fingers.

“Hyung, when was the last time you slept?” he asks him as gently as he can. “You need to sleep.”

“Stay with me, okay? Please?” Jonghyun says, choked with snot, and it’s only so painful because he’s drunk and so he puts it like a question. Usually, he’d say _You can’t just leave like this, Taemin-ah,_ or _Where do you think you’re going, Taemin-ah,_ but this is always what he’s really saying, and Taemin knows that. It’s just another thing entirely to hear it out loud. He catches Taemin nodding and lets out a jagged breath, tries to smile. “That’s right. It’s your fault I’m like this, so take responsibility.”

“Okay.”

 

Jonghyun teases him about going to a hotel, but when Taemin doesn’t react, he loses interest. They end up just going back to the dorm. Both of them moved out this year, but it’s the only place they can think of that they share. 

The passcode has changed since the last time either of them stayed over, so manager hyung lets them in in the end. Jonghyun hangs back uncertainly, hanging onto the back of Taemin’s jacket with his cap pulled low over his face, but manager hyung’s eyes are glued shut with sleep, and he’s too tired to swear at them, even, and then Jonghyun is herding Taemin into their room, and they’re alone again.

Taemin strips without thinking much of it, but again, Jonghyun lingers behind him, unsure.

“What are you doing,” Taemin prods him, trying hard to ignore all the stupid reasons why Jonghyun is torturing himself right now, how long it’s been since they last fucked, how much Jonghyun’s body might have changed since then. “It’s nothing I haven’t seen before like a gazillion times.”

Jonghyun’s mouth crooks into a smirk, but halfway there it settles into something else, small and sincere, and it makes him shy.

They pick Jonghyun’s bed because Taemin’s is somehow still piled with crap after all the time he’s been gone. It’s a little cramped like always, but that’s okay, it’s nice. Taemin lifts his head so Jonghyun can wriggle his arm underneath, and when he lays back, his ear fills with Jonghyun’s heartbeat, and every small movement Jonghyun makes becomes an ocean.

“I’m getting dirty thoughts,” Jonghyun murmurs after a while, each word a puff of air on Taemin’s face.

“Go to sleep,” Taemin says, but he doesn’t close his own eyes, and he leans into it when Jonghyun closes the gap and gives him a lingering kiss.

Jonghyun’s eyes are still closed when he pulls away, and he’s so beautiful Taemin’s heart hurts. It’s just a moment, and then Jonghyun smirks, for real this time.

“Stop staring at me.”

“Yes, hyung,” Taemin says, so incongruously it makes them both want to laugh, but he obeys him anyway, snuggles in closer and tries to squash the strange fluttering thing in his stomach. Jonghyun just makes a low, amused sound and gives him another kiss and reaches up to tuck a strand of Taemin’s hair behind his ear, hand warm and rough on Taemin’s cheek.

“When did you fall for me?” Jonghyun says unexpectedly.

Taemin is at a loss. “You’re asking me now?”

Jonghyun doesn’t blink. “I’ve always been curious, I’m just asking now.”

Taemin thinks about it for a long time, absently tripping his fingers down the curve of Jonghyun’s spine.

“I don’t know,” he says finally.

Jonghyun seems to like that answer. 

 

**2008**

 

The jacket hangs like a black veil over Taemin’s vision, soft and close against his face. He reaches up, gets a hold on it, and it slinks into his lap, strings cut.

“Thanks, hyung,” he says.

Jonghyun hyung sinks down to sit on his haunches beside him. It’s lunch break on Saturday, a couple days after him and Jonghyun hyung and six or seven others got called in and told they were going to be in a group together, decision handed down like the word of God. Taemin’s not sure if they’re all going to make the cut all the same. They keep grabbing five or six of them at a time, taking so many photos Taemin’s cheeks ache from forcing a smile by the end.

He just needs some time alone, which is why he’s up here on the roof, even though it’s still winter and he didn’t think to bring his coat. That’s probably why Jonghyun hyung came after him. Taemin would feel bad but he knows he likes the cold more than anything.

“You don’t seem too excited,” Jonghyun hyung observes at length.

“It’s not that, I am excited,” Taemin says quickly, because that’s the one thing he’s sure of. “It just doesn’t feel real, yet. And…” he hugs his knees tightly. It’s been a year or two since he’s been able to admit stuff like this to Jonghyun hyung, but it still feels like the first time, each time. “And I don’t know if I’m ready. I keep thinking that maybe it would be better if they didn’t pick me in the end.”

“You don’t know what it’s going to be like, either. And it’s not like it’s the end of anything when you debut,” Jonghyun hyung says, a little too quickly. It’s almost like he’s had these thoughts, too, and Taemin doesn’t understand that, because Jonghyun hyung is so good at everything and Taemin knows he knows it. “You don’t even have to see it as a new start, if you don’t want to. I mean, things will change, and get harder for you, but you can just change, too.”

“This is really happening,” Taemin says, kind of blanking out, and Jonghyun’s hand comes down on his hair, clumsy with laughter. It makes Taemin smile.

“You really didn’t expect this at all? But you’ve at least thought about it, you’ve been coming here for three years.”

Jonghyun hyung is just trying to help, but something in his tone makes it feel like he’s arguing with Taemin or something.

“That’s not the same thing,” Taemin says, caught out. “Whenever I thought about it, I imagined things differently. Like a dream, I guess?”

“Different how?” Jonghyun hyung prompts him, watching him closely.

“Like…Rain sunbaenim. Doing everything myself.”

“Aigoo, someone’s greedy. You’re too good for the rest of us, I get it.”

Jonghyun hyung isn’t laughing at him, exactly, but he’s not looking at Taemin anymore, either, smile slipping and staring moodily into the busy city streets at their feet. Something in his face has Taemin’s insides curling in on themselves, but he knows the feeling so well it hardly matters, he’s safe. These days he even sees things while he waits, today the gooseflesh on Jonghyun hyung’s skinny arms and the delicate furl of his ear peaking out from his too-long hair.

“Don’t give up on yourself, okay?” Jonghyun hyung says finally, and it throws Taemin off, how sure he is that this isn’t what Jonghyun hyung was trying not to say all this while. He stands up without waiting for an answer. “You can’t see it right now, but this is a good thing.”

 

In the craziness of his life over the next months, he totally forgets they ever talked about any of this, until another Saturday in spring, when they’re lying around in Taemin’s room, sharing Jonghyun hyung’s headphones while Taemin does his homework. Taemin doesn’t actually like Chris Brown that much, but Jonghyun hyung does, and it keeps him quiet. 

It’s one of the last days they’ll spend like this, shut away with all Taemin’s stuff and all his memories from before Jonghyun hyung, and Taemin’s not sure why that feels sad, because it’s not like he’ll never get to come back here once he moves into the dorm, and he’s going to be seeing so much of Jonghyun hyung now that he might start hating him. 

“I was really happy when I found out we’d debut together,” Jonghyun hyung tells the ceiling suddenly, and it’s the first thing he’s said in an hour.

“Mm,” Taemin affirms.

Jonghyun hyung rolls over and the cord gets caught under his body, ripping the music out of both their ears so cleanly it feels like it’s from another planet when the song keeps playing, tinny and indistinct on the floor. 

“Weren’t you happy at all?” Jonghyun hyung demands, scowling at him.

“Mm,” Taemin affirms again.

Jonghyun hyung narrows his eyes at him. Taemin hesitates, and then puts his pencil down.

“Taemin-ah, do you even like me?”

Taemin is so surprised he almost forgets he needs to answer him, and just nods again, “Mm.”

Jonghyun hyung sits up, looking down at him this way and that like he’s trying to figure out how he can get into Taemin’s head. Taemin lets him look, tries to ignore how hot his ears are getting, how his stomach is in free-fall, how much he likes and hates this feeling, how little he understands himself.

“How much do you like me?” Jonghyun hyung says finally, cornering him, and Taemin freezes.

Jonghyun hyung waits and waits and Taemin can’t talk. He doesn’t give Taemin enough time, though, even though he knows by now that Taemin just needs time, and before Taemin knows what’s happening he’s flopped down again, turning his back on Taemin.

This is all so stupid.

“Jonghyun hyung,” Taemin tries, scrambling upright and scooting over next to him. When he pokes him with his toe, Jonghyun hyung ignores him, so he does it again, harder. “Jonghyun hyung!”

“What?” Jonghyun hyung grumps, and suddenly Taemin can’t stop smiling.

“I was really happy when I found out we’d debut together,” he says.

Silence.

“Weren’t you happy at all?” he asks.

Silence. Taemin leans in, tries pulling Jonghyun hyung back by the shoulder. Jonghyun hyung isn’t having it, yanks away from him, but it’s okay, Taemin knows his secret. He leans over him, says right into his ear, “Jonghyun-ah, do you even like me?”

Jonghyun hyung cracks, and then it’s on, and for a while neither of them can breathe, struggling against each other weakly, and Taemin doesn’t know what makes him laugh harder, Jonghyun hyung’s blind eye smiles, the crazy sounds coming out of his own mouth, maybe the fact that this is something that they’re really doing. Eventually Jonghyun climbs off him, victorious, and they lie next to each other, spent and gasping.

“Hyung,” Taemin says to him, because suddenly this is so important.

“Yeah?”

“I think…” Jonghyun hyung turns his face towards him, and he gets distracted looking at him. _Jonghyun_. But he’s waiting, so… “I’ll just like you as much as you like me.”

“I don’t know if it works like that, Taemin-ah,” Jonghyun hyung says, without even thinking about it. Taemin has thought about it, though, and he’s thinking about it some more now, and it sounds right to him.

“You don’t know that it doesn’t, either,” he says.


End file.
